Bandaged Hands
by ncfan
Summary: /SasuTen, small ItaHana/ She wore bandages around her hands when she trained. Sasuke, Tenten, others. Pre-show. Valentines Day Special!


I decided that since it was Valentine's Day, I might as well right some romance. Chibi romance, anyway. Just remember, pre-massacre Sasuke is a very different person from post-massacre Sasuke.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

* * *

**1**

Sasuke's blood thrilled in excitement as he watched her practice. The brown-haired girl, her hair pulled up into now-slightly-sweaty buns, twisted and turned throwing shuriken like it was some sort of elaborate dance.

The girl trained in the Academy training ground after class every day; it was like an obsession with her. Sasuke watched with fascination as her small arms twisted and turned like the undulations of a snake in hypnotic motion.

Sasuke couldn't believe that none of the academy teachers were supervising her while she practiced with the shuriken; Iruka-sensei tended to be very protective of the younger students. She couldn't have been more than a year older than him, yet she was left alone while practicing. It was incredible.

_Maybe she can help me with my shuriken practice, _Sasuke thought, a small smile forming on his face. _If she's so good that the teachers don't supervise while she practices, maybe she can help me…_

He hopped down from his hiding place in the summer-green oak tree and walked across the training ground, a hot, torrid wind, remnants of noonday when the height of the day that had long since passed, catching dust particles and sending them across the courtyard as he walked.

She stopped abruptly as he drew near, gasping slightly, the smell of perspiration on her high-collared shirt reaching Sasuke and assaulting his nose with its sickly sweet smell.

"Hi, I'm Uchiha Sasuke. What's your name?" Sasuke smiled and waved, waiting for the girl to turn around.

Her chocolate brown eyes, slightly lighter in shade than her hair, met his, and Sasuke felt his face grow warm. "I'm Tenten. What're you doing here?" Her slightly breathless voice was more curious than annoyed; Sasuke took this to be a good sign.

"Well, Tenten-san, I was wondering if you'd let me train with you."

She gave him a long, measuring look, before shaking her head. "No way." Sasuke felt his heart drop. "I know who you are. If anything happened to you, your parents would eat me alive." She picked up a few fallen shuriken.

"Can I at least watch?" Sasuke asked desperately.

The girl turned, and smiled mischievously. "Isn't that what you've been doing for the past two weeks?" Sasuke felt his cheeks burn. "Just stay behind me so you'll be out of the line of fire."

Sasuke beamed and moved to a position behind her, off to the right.

While Tenten was training, Sasuke noticed something. "Hey, Tenten-san, why do you wear bandages around your hands?"

Tenten had bandages wrapped around the palm of her hands. "Iruka-sensei told me to wear them so my hands wouldn't get torn up while I practiced, since I still haven't quite figured out how to hold shuriken when I throw them."

Sasuke nodded, an idea formulating in his mind.

When Sasuke went home, he set off to practice with shuriken on the Uchiha compound. Fairly soon, his mother called him in for dinner, and started with shock when she saw his hands.

"Oh, baby! Did you hurt your hands?"

"Na-ah, Mother. An older girl at the Academy told me to wear them when I practice with shuriken."

Sasuke didn't notice his brother and father's approving smiles.

**2**

Sasuke and Tenten met again the next day, on the training ground. This time, it was a combined class with Tenten's year and Sasuke's being paired off together to practice the Kawairimi no Jutsu.

The students were supposed to switch their bodies with the logs placed along the gates to avoid getting hit with their partner's water balloons.

Tenten had been paired off with a boy in her own year who she apparently knew, a boy who couldn't perform the Kawairimi to save his life and was extremely wet. He had freaky eyebrows.

"Come on, Lee, you can do it!" Tenten encouraged him tirelessly. Sasuke frowned.

Suddenly, something cold and wet burst on the back of his neck, drenching his shirt and making the six-year-old squeal in surprise. "Come on, teme! We're supposed to be training!"

Sasuke wished they had put him with _anyone_ but Naruto. But deep down, he wished they had put him with Tenten. At least she didn't throw water balloons at a person when they weren't looking.

**3**

One day, Sasuke returned to the training ground just as afternoon started to bleed into sunset, and as usual found Tenten there, ripping into a wooden post with the shuriken supplied for the older academy students, with renewed fury.

But this time, there was something different about her.

Her hair was loose.

Tenten's hair was _loose._

Sasuke's mouth dropped open. _Wow…She's pretty._

Tenten turned around, her face scrunched in fury. She noticed where his eyes were. "Some stupid academy girls stole my hair ties." Her voice was tight with anger.

Now Sasuke knew why Ami and her cronies had been holding up two bright red hair ties and giggling with pure _evil_ written on their ugly faces.

Tomorrow, when Tenten came to the training post to train, she found a somewhat bruised Sasuke holding two crimson hair ties and grinning.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" Tenten pulled him into a bear hug, practically bouncing up and down for joy.

Sasuke was sure his face had never gone so red in his life. "No problem," he modestly managed, trying to remember how to breathe.

She still wouldn't let him train with her.

**4**

Sasuke realized that he had a crush on Tenten three weeks after he started blushing every time she came into his presence.

It was a wonderful feeling. The one girl he liked was the one girl who didn't turn into a ball of mush every time he came into her presence. She was nice, and practical, and she could beat up a boy twice her size.

It was also the day he realized he had competition for her attention.

Tenten's personality made her _very_ popular with the boys in her year. It was only small consolation that the one boy besides Lee who didn't have the hots for her, Hyuuga Neji, took it in turn to beat every single one of her admirers into the ground.

Sasuke started to train harder so he could do the same; it never occurred to him that Neji was doing it possibly because he liked her too.

Tenten, of course, was completely oblivious; her focus on training tended to make her tune out everything else. So Sasuke stewed on his feelings, settled for making eyes at her the way Sakura and Ino did at him, and held his tongue while she danced her wicked dance at training.

**5**

Soon, Sasuke couldn't even have alone time with her either.

Iruka-sensei had discovered that Tenten was keenly observant and allowed the younger children to practice with shuriken, provided that she was around and acted as sort of an unofficial supervisor while she practiced herself.

The training ground was suddenly _much_ more crowded in the afternoons.

Sakura and Ino took the opportunity to come so they could giggle and fawn and make fools of themselves over Sasuke. Sasuke was extremely creeped out.

Hinata came for similar reasons, except it was to stare at Naruto, and faint whenever he noticed her. _"Oh, great," Tenten groaned. "She's fainted again. Somebody go get a bucket of water."_

Naruto and Lee just came for the company. Everyone else who came came simply to practice.

Sasuke personally wanted to jump on Lee and tear his eyebrows off every time the older boy hit the mark on the post and started jumping up and down and shouting, "Hey, Tenten, I got it!"

And Naruto…

"Tenten-neechan! Sasuke-teme called me a dobe!"

Sasuke just wanted to push Naruto into the nearest lake.

**6**

And soon, other people were noticing Sasuke's crush as well.

Amazingly, it was the blond loudmouth known as Uzumaki Naruto, otherwise known as "dobe" and "ramen freak", who first noticed.

"_Hahaha! You have a crush on Tenten?" Naruto fell over howling with laughter, his short legs kicking up dust._

_For the life of him, while Sasuke stared down at his classmate, a vein over his right eye twitching incessantly, Sasuke could not figure out what was so funny._

Sasuke had to bribe Naruto with a family jutsu that the blond couldn't even pull off to keep him from telling her.

The next two people who noticed, however, did not surprise Sasuke at all.

It was dusk one day at the training ground; one of the Hyuuga boys (not Neji; Neji had already gone home, much to Sasuke's—and everyone else's—relief) was bullying Hinata and Tenten, who had taken a sisterly sort of shine to the girl, promptly jumped on him and made him scream for his mother.

While Sasuke gaped in awe, Itachi and Shisui showed up to take him home.

_Shisui laughed when he noticed the look on his small cousin's face. "Look, Itachi," he choked out through his laughs. "Your brother's got your taste for violent girls."_

_A vein over Itachi's eye immediately started twitching. "Shisui," he murmured tightly, "I thought we agreed to never speak of that again."_

"_Oh, yeah."_

"_Whatcha guys talking about?" Hana, who had showed up to take Kiba home, suddenly popped up beside them, her black eyes curious._

_Itachi just stared at her, suddenly deprived of the ability to speak intelligibly; Shisui had to come to his rescue. "Oh, nothing Hana-san."_

"_Okay. Weirdo," Hana muttered as she and her dogs snatched "runt" Kiba; the word "weirdo" had obviously been aimed at Itachi._

_Itachi just blushed as hard as Sasuke did when Shisui ribbed him about Tenten all the way home…_

**7**

Shisui and Tenten got along disturbingly well, far better than either Sasuke or his brother would have liked.

They also shared each other's taste for pranks.

Sasuke and Itachi had discovered this while they were walking home through the city during summer, and passed under a bridge. Everything seemed normal at first, and neither of them suspected what was waiting on the other side.

When they got to the other side, they were promptly pelted with water balloons.

"_Ahhh!" Sasuke screamed as a bright red water balloon connected with the crown of his head; Itachi's eyes just widened considerably as stumbled and almost fell over completely._

_Two twin peals of laughter, one much more high-pitched than the other, erupted from above their heads._

_Tenten screamed with laughter and waved down, and the other…_

_Well, Sasuke and Itachi only knew of one Uchiha who had curly hair._

The Uchiha brothers immediately started thinking of ways to get them back; what happened next was a two-month long prank war, in which Naruto and Lee were drawn into the deadly struggle. No one could have told you who won.

**8**

Sasuke bore witness to Neji and Tenten's first schoolyard brawl.

Sasuke had been one of the first to notice Neji tormenting Lee, and though he didn't move in to defend him (they _were_ rivals after all), he knew that when Tenten came along, fur was gonna fly.

His prediction proved correct.

Sasuke hadn't known that a working class girl with no special moves or kekkei genkai could so completely brutalize a Hyuuga prodigy, nor that Neji could squeal so girlishly.

When Tenten was carried away by Iruka-sensei, Lee wasn't the only one running after her.

Tenten came back to school the next day.

Neji stayed home for a week. And when he returned to the Academy, he got into another fight. This time with Sasuke.

When it came to the strength of the Byakugan and Jyuuken strikes against gigantic fireballs, the fight ended up being a draw.

"_So Tenten," Ino asked suggestively as Tenten watched the fight worriedly. "How does it feel to have the two cutest guys in the Academy fighting over you?" Sakura nodded at Ino's shoulder._

"_Fighting over me?" Tenten asked blankly._

"_Yeah!" Sakura smiled. "They both like you. We're actually kinda jealous."_

_Tenten rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on. Sasuke's just a kid, and Neji's…well, he's just a jerk!" Still, her face colored a little. _Does he really…

_Ino and Sakura noticed. "Ahah!" Ino shouted. "I knew it! Well, back off, sister, Sasuke-kun's _mine_!"_

_Sakura glared. "No, he's mine!"_

_Tenten snorted, suddenly very glad she wasn't like those two girls._

Still, it was the first indication that Sasuke had a crush on her that she knew of.

**9**

"Hey, Sasuke?" Tenten asked, frowning at Itachi's strangely mechanical movements as he trained a few posts away. "Is it just me, or is your brother acting kinda weird?"

Sasuke started, and stared at his tense older brother. "Niisan's been pretty tense lately, but I think he's alright. You know he's in ANBU now, right?" Sasuke's voice tinted with pride.

Tenten nodded absently, and frowned in abstracted worry. She didn't pay a great deal of attention to shuriken practice after that.

Itachi massacred the clan three days later.

**10**

Sasuke stared out into the waters of the pond, wondering why his brother had done it, when a small crackle sounded behind him.

It was Tenten, holding a box of shuriken and a roll of bandages. She gave him an uncertain, strangely gentle smile.

"Sasuke?" Her voice was quiet, even subdued. "I'm sorry about what happened to your family."

Sasuke looked away, his fists clenching. She walked over to him.

"I lifted these from the Academy. Wanna train with me?" She held out a hand shiny with new calluses.

Sasuke hesitated a little, then took it; her hand was pleasantly warm. Revenge could wait for a little while.

But…

"I don't think I'll need those bandages any more."


End file.
